Louise Leakey

Louise first became actively involved in fossil discoveries in 1977, at the age of six, when she became the youngest person to find hominid fossils.[2] In 1993, she replaced her father Richard Leakey as field expedition leader for Turkana paleontological expeditions, in one of the most arid and hostile environments on Earth.

Today, together with her mother, Meave Leakey, she leads the Koobi Fora research project. This has produced some of the most notable hominid fossil discoveries of the past two decades, the most recent being Kenyanthropus platyops.

Louise Leakey was born in Kenya in 1972, the same year as her grandfather Louis Leakey died. She married Emmanuel de Merode, a Belgian primatologist in 2003. They have two daughters: Seiya, born in 2004, and Alexia born in 2006.[2]